Man sentenced to death for fatally stabbing inmate at Marion County jail

A Marion County jury sentenced a 45-year-old member of the Krude Rude Brood gang to death for fatally stabbing a fellow inmate while incarcerated in 2013.

It took the jury less than an hour to reach their verdict after hearing the prosecution's and defense's closing arguments on Thursday

The victim's family silently teared up as Judge Tracy Prall read the sentence aloud for David Ray Bartol.

In October, Bartol was convicted of aggravated murder for stabbing Gavin Siscel, 33, to death with a homemade knife in the Marion County jail's day room. Siscel was serving a 30-day sentence for contempt of court at the time of the attack.

Bartol had been incarcerated since March 2013 while awaiting trial for a robbery. The day before he stabbed Siscel, Bartol was arraigned on attempted murder charges in connection with a January home invasion shooting in South Salem.

During closing arguments, Marion County Deputy District Attorney Matthew Kemmy argued that Bartol deliberately and intentionally murdered Siscel.

Kemmy said the attack was random and unprovoked. He was mad at his former co-conspirator for talking to investigators, Kemmy said, but the man was in protective custody, so Bartol lashed out at a random inmate. Siscel was in jail for contempt and had struggled with mental illness since he was young.

Bartol braided threads from his uniform together and used it to saw through a plastic tote bin and form a shank. He sharpened the shank by rubbing it against concrete and dipping it into his toilet bowl. Kemmy said he slept with it hidden in his mattress.

On the morning of the stabbing, he wrote, "It's a good day for a (expletive) to die."

According to reports, Bartol walked up to Siscel, who was watching TV in the jail's day room, and hit him in the jaw with a stolen flashlight.

After stabbing Siscel in the eye, he repeatedly pounded the shank into his eye socket with a shower sandal until it reached his brain.

Krude Rude Brood gang member found guilty in fatal jail stabbing

Siscel was taken to the hospital, where he died five days later.

Afterword, Bartol wrote that the death was a "free kill for my trophy room."

Kemmy said Bartol's attack on Siscel was just one example of his violent and dangerous behavior. The prosecution brought in 160 witnesses and 330 exhibits to illustrate his history of threats, assaults and intimidation.

"David Bartol is a frightening, dangerous person.... that will not change," he said.

In August, a Multnomah County jury found Bartol guilty of 24 counts — including aggravated attempted murder and kidnapping — for torturing two fellow Krude Rude Brood gang members. The group, a White supremacist gang, became notorious in Portland for dealing methamphetamine and torturing its enemies. Bartol was accused of sanding gang members' tattoos off, injecting them with heroin and shooting them. He was sentenced to 55 years in prison.

Bartol's arrest record spans almost three decades and includes convictions for attempted murder, robbery and assault. Previous court records listed Bartol as Salem resident.

Kemmy played a recording of Bartol talking about one of the gang-related attacks on the phone.

"I made him sing me happy birthday after I shot him," Bartol said and laughed.

Bartol was already set to live out his life incarcerated for the attempted murders. Kemmy said sentencing him to life in prison for Siscel's murder would be the equivalent of not punishing him at all.

"Gavin Siscel's life is worth more than that," he said.

During the sentencing closing arguments, Bartol's defense attorneys argued that he should be spared the death penalty because he was intellectually disabled and has a fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. The untreated symptoms of the disorder caused him to act violently and irrationally, said defense attorney David Kuhns.

"Each of you will make a life or death decision," Kuhns told the jury.

He said Bartol's mother drank every day and did drugs while she was pregnant with him, causing him to develop partial fetal alcohol syndrome, a disorder that can cause sufferers to have limited mental capacities, no concept of risk, be physically brutal, have difficulty empathizing and be prone to bragging.

Bartol's disorder went un-diagnosed for most of his life, Kuhns said. He lagged behind at school, began using drugs and ran into trouble with the law as a teenager. From ages 14 to 45, Bartol received more than 20 different mental health diagnosis ranging from obsessive compulsive disorder to sociopathy.

Kuhns likened life to running a marathon and the disorder to having a refrigerator strapped to someone's back during the race.

"It explains why he behaved the way he did," he added.

Since receiving treatment and medication for fetal alcohol syndrome, his infractions have gone down. Kuhns asked the jury to consider mercy a mitigating factor and sentence Bartol to life in prison.

"It matters because David Bartol is a broken and damaged person, not an evil person," he said. "I'm asking that you not give up on (him). He's not a lost cause."

Kemmy countered that Bartol would not change, and he needed to be held accountable for the "nauseatingly violent" attack.

"This is a serious thing we're asking you to do," he told the jury.

The trial was rescheduled to run until Nov. 18, but the jury needed less than an hour to deliberate. After unanimously sentencing Bartol to death, the jurors were relieved of their duties.

"These are difficult cases," Marion County District Attorney Walt Beglau said in a statement. "We respect the work of the jury, the court and the parties."

Bartol's defense attorney Steven Gorham expressed his dismay after the verdict.

"It's unfortunate the jury came out with this decision," he said.

The prolonged trial wasted more than $1 million, he added.

"That money should've been spent on something more positive that trying to kill David Bartol," Gorham said.

After an official sentencing date on Nov. 15, Bartol will join 34 others on Oregon's death row. No inmate has been executed since 1997. In 2011, then-Gov. John Kitzhaber placed a moratorium on all executions.

Gorham said he expected to appeal the death sentence.

Email wmwoodwort@statesmanjournal.com, call 503-399-6884 or follow on Twitter @wmwoodworth